Bosch: Scaling Primary Supplier Data to Power Strategic Decision-Making

Since 2021, Bosch has worked with CDP to rapidly grow the number of businesses disclosing primary data within their supply chain from 500 suppliers to over 3,200, empowering its team to translate this insight into impact. The company is convinced that connection and collaboration are key to both tackling climate change and boosting business resilience.

How does Bosch multiply impact across its supply chain?

With Scope 3 emissions on average 26 times greater than a company’s operational emissions, Bosch recognizes the crucial role that its supply chain plays in the company achieving its decarbonization goals of reducing Scope 3 emissions by 30% by 2030, compared to 2018.

Bosch is fostering emissions reductions by engaging its extensive network of suppliers in various industries through CDP Supply Chain Membership and disclosure, using the data they disclose to create transparency and thus support climate targets according to the United Nations 2015 Paris Agreement.

• Data for decision-making: Bosch works with CDP to gather primary response data from its suppliers using this information as one aspect for creating internal scores for each supplier, considering CDP‘s climate scoring. Bosch uses the internal scores in its purchasing process, to offer suppliers incentives for performance, define expectations and discuss where improvements can be made.

• From insight to impact: This data-enabled approach is contributing to emissions reductions across the supply chain. Suppliers disclosing for multiple years through CDP Supply Chain Membership show on average an emission reduction, compared to their initial disclosure.

• Growing transparency: Since 2021, Bosch has integrated CDP into its supply chain engagement approach by requesting primary data from their top suppliers, enabling them to access comparable, raw supplier data across key environmental topics. Through educating their team and collaborating with CDP to expand engagement scope, Bosch has quickly scaled their requests from 500 suppliers to over 4,500 suppliers in 2025, with more than 3,200 currently disclosing data through CDP.

Cross-sector commitment

A focus area of Bosch’s engagement and scoring of suppliers is whether companies have science-based targets. This has led to over 1,270 of Bosch’s suppliers committing to SBTi (Science Based Target initiative) CO2 targets in 2024. This represents more than 38% of Bosch’s purchasing volume.

This approach gives Bosch a multiplier effect, which exceeds the effects in its own supply chain many times over.

Connecting value chain insight to action

Bosch works with CDP to gain the necessary primary supplier-level data to inform long-term procurement decisions, strategic considerations and strengthen engagement – contributing to the reduction of emissions across their value chain. Upstream emissions resulting from purchased goods and services are integral to Bosch’s overarching sustainability ambition to reduce its overall Scope 3 footprint by 30% by 2030, compared to 2018 (in absolute terms).

• Multi-year engagement drives data density: Through CDP Supply Chain Membership, Bosch’s suppliers provided primary CO2 data for around 77% of the company’s purchasing volume in 2024, creating transparent, comparable and strategic sector-specific insights for future engagement with suppliers.

• Driving progress through tracking and informed purchasing decisions: Bosch uses the primary data from its suppliers to track their performance over time with their own internal scoring and bonus/malus programs. The company also uses supplier scorecards on CDP and SBTi performance for informed procurement decision-making and supports suppliers showing progress to invest in sustainability initiatives through financial benefits. About half of Bosch’s suppliers have improved their CDP score over several years.

• Gaining more comprehensive data by supporting SME disclosure: More than half of Bosch’s disclosing suppliers are small-to-medium businesses (SMEs). The companies benefit from CDP’s tailored SME questionnaire and enhanced guidance to reduce barriers for smaller businesses across their value chain to disclose.

• Educating teams is crucial to creating impact: Bosch empowers their organization to leverage incoming information from suppliers, through common training and technology. This has set the company’s team up to transform the data into positive business impact.

Recommendations and insights

Bosch’s journey offers actionable takeaways for other companies:

• Take a consistent approach to scale transparency: Bosch’s approach to quickly scaling supplier engagement, working together with CDP and equipping their team, is enabling the company to gain greater visibility of their supply chain. Through this, they can identify impacts and opportunities with more accuracy.

• Collaborate with suppliers on tangible goals: Bosch is working together with suppliers, as an active member of CDP’s Supply Chain Program to help them establish and commit to science-based targets. Education and enablement are key, with Bosch working closely with CDP on webinars and resources for its suppliers.

• Empower teams to turn data into action: By educating their procurement team and seeking to integrate CDP supplier data into their systems as much as possible, Bosch has set up their organization to utilize the insights gained from supplier information. The company is leveraging this data to inform strategic decisions that drive their decarbonization journey while future-proofing their business and value chain.

Dr. Thomas Schulte, Senior Vice President and Head of Sustainability & EHS concludes: “Bosch’s strategic partnership with CDP is an important factor to drive the decarbonization of our supply chain, by transforming data into impactful action."

Find out more about how your company can access primary and comparable supplier data.